Obama Spars with Romney Over Omissions in Convention Speeches

Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s campaign
and Republican Mitt Romney traded attacks yesterday over what
the two White House candidates didn’t say at their respective
conventions.

As the Obama campaign reiterated its attack on Romney’s
decision not to include anything about the war in Afghanistan in
his Aug. 30 address at his party’s nomination, Romney struck
back during an appearance in Ohio, saying Obama omitted direct
mention of lingering high unemployment in his Sept. 6 nomination
acceptance speech in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“You know, I was surprised at the president’s speech at
the Democratic convention. He didn’t mention unemployment,”
Romney said from the center of the manufacturing floor at PR
Machine Works Inc. in Mansfield, Ohio.

As Romney and Obama reach the final stage of the 2012
campaign, both campaigns are searching for ways to differentiate
themselves, especially as they visit swing states such as Ohio.

While Obama didn’t specifically refer in his convention
remarks to an unemployment rate that has been above 8 percent
for 43 consecutive months -- since February 2009 -- he did say
he has “shared the pain of the families who’ve lost their
homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.”

Joblessness Figures

U.S. Labor Department figures released the day after his
speech showed an August unemployment rate of 8.1 percent, driven
down from 8.3 percent by Americans leaving the labor force.

Romney’s stop in Mansfield came a little more than a month
after President Barack Obama came through the same town, located
about 70 miles north of the state capital of Columbus. Romney’s
visit underscored what will be a concerted push by his campaign
and the Republican National Committee to carry Ohio, said Kevin
Madden, a Romney adviser.

“We’ll have travel here; we’ve got Romney for president
and RNC resources and infrastructure in this state, and that
will continue all the way through to the election,” Madden told
reporters after the event.

Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, has sided with the victor in
12 consecutive presidential elections, starting in 1964.

After national polls showed Romney getting little bounce in
support after the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, the
surveys have shown Obama benefitting from his party’s gathering.

CNN Survey

A poll of likely voters released yesterday by CNN showed
Obama leading Romney 52 percent to 46 percent. The poll,
conducted from Sept. 7 through Sept. 9, has an error margin of
plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The Gallup tracking poll -- which had shown a virtual tie
in recent weeks -- shows Obama leading 49 percent to 44 percent
in a rolling seven-day average through Sept. 9.

Romney pollster Neil Newhouse countered that the polls
reflected a fleeting surge in Obama’s support that doesn’t
indicate any fundamental change in the race, which will be
decided by the economy. That will be Obama’s “ultimate
downfall,” according to a memo circulated by the campaign.

“While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar-high from
the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed
significantly,” Newhouse wrote in the memo.

As Romney pushed Obama on unemployment at his Ohio event
yesterday, the president’s campaign continued to hammer at the
former Massachusetts governor on the Afghanistan issue and
argued he is unfit to serve as commander in chief.

Afghanistan Debate

In a conference call with reporters, Wesley Clark, the
former NATO supreme allied commander and an unsuccessful
candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said
that, in failing to mention Afghanistan in his convention
speech, Romney had ignored U.S. troops and veterans and failed
to lay out a plan for extricating American forces from that
country.

“It reveals a severe lack of understanding about the job
as president, doesn’t reflect well on what kind of leadership he
would bring, and, frankly, it’s just unbecoming of someone who
wants to become commander in chief,” Clark said.

Asked why he didn’t address Afghanistan in his convention
remarks, Romney told reporters last week that he talked about it
the day before during in a speech in Indianapolis, Indiana, to
the American Legion. In that speech, in front of a much smaller
audience than the 30 million who watched him at his party’s
convention, Romney mentioned Afghanistan once without outlining
his plan for handling the conflict there.

No ‘Laundry List’

Romney brushed off the criticism on the issue during a
Sept. 7 Fox News Channel interview. “When you give a speech,
you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things
that you think are important, and I described in my speech my
commitment to a strong military, unlike the president’s decision
to cut our military,” he said.

Romney, who is scheduled to address the National Guard
Association today in Reno, Nevada, in his Mansfield appearance
also attacked Obama on defense cuts set to take effect starting
in January 2013. The cuts are part of $1.2 trillion in
automatic, across-the-board reductions approved for the next
decade after talks failed last year on a bipartisan plan to curb
the nation’s debt. The defense portion of the cuts amounts to
$500 billion.

Romney pledged to stop the cuts if he wins in November,
saying they would weaken U.S. defense capabilities and the
economy.

“I will not cut our military budget; I will preserve it,”
Romney said.

Each campaign announced yesterday pulling in more than $100
million in donations in August, with Obama narrowly besting
Romney $114 million to $111.6 million.

The totals include money raised by their campaigns as well
as by joint fundraising efforts with their respective national
political parties. It was the first time in four months that
Obama’s fundraising efforts had surpassed Romney’s.